Guest post by Avery Farmer ’20 For the past eighteen months, I have been working to digitize the Amherst College Photographer Negative Collection 1965-2005. For three hours at a time on a few afternoons each week, I shut myself into a windowless room in the basement of the library, its lights turned off to guarantee…Continue Reading Commencement Here at Amherst
Adventures with the Henry J. Van Lennep Collection
In 2018 I worked closely with the Henry J. Van Lennep Collection, one of the collections that the Digital Programs department and Archives and Special Collections have selected for digitization for the upcoming Amherst College bicentennial. This chance to work with the Van Lennep collection was interesting and appealing to me for several…Continue Reading Adventures with the Henry J. Van Lennep Collection
Moratorium Photographs
This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of Amherst College’s Moratoria in the spring of 1969. As the library digitizes materials from our college archives, we are adding images that capture scenes from this momentous time at Amherst. These are part of the massive Amherst College Photographer Records series in the Amherst College Digital Collections. Photographs of…Continue Reading Moratorium Photographs
The Introduction of World War II to Amherst College
Guest post by Campbell Hannan ’21 In September of 1939, then-President of Amherst, Stanley King opened his convocation address in Johnston Chapel with a somewhat ominous proclamation. “This year we open with Europe at war,” he said. “What effect that war will have on America no man can tell. But that it will affect America…Continue Reading The Introduction of World War II to Amherst College
What’s up with the Bicentennial Project?
Since we officially began the Bicentennial Project in August 2017, we’ve been busy! So, where are we now? Well, back when I wrote Choosing the Bicentennial Collections in February 2018 we had decided to attempt to digitize, describe, and make available in ACDC 23 collections, either in part or full. So far, we’ve prepared for…Continue Reading What’s up with the Bicentennial Project?
Side Effects
When I was thinking about what I wanted to write for this post, it occurred to me to talk about my interaction with the collections we have here, outside of my official role as a software developer. In my role here, I’m responsible for the images and metadata getting ingested into our digital asset management…Continue Reading Side Effects
On Gleaning the College’s History Through Documents
Guest post by Zehra Madhavan ’20 When I started working at Digital Collections as a Student Assistant during the spring semester of my freshman year, my understanding of Amherst College’s history was limited to facts I had read about in pamphlets and bits and pieces of information I had picked up in various lectures and…Continue Reading On Gleaning the College’s History Through Documents
No college is an island: Amherst College chooses Islandora
Behind the letters, images, photographs, and other treasures on display in Amherst College Digital Collections is software. To the public, this software is largely invisible, with our user interface showcasing the discovery and display of the digital objects from Archives and Special Collections. Our underlying software infrastructure requires ongoing maintenance, upkeep, and upgrade as technology…Continue Reading No college is an island: Amherst College chooses Islandora
Imaging Studio | Fall 2018 Edition.
As the summer winds down and we move into the fall semester I was able to take stock of the past year and the progress we’ve made in the imaging lab in the library. I started in my position at Amherst in late May 2017 and I spent most of the summer learning about the…Continue Reading Imaging Studio | Fall 2018 Edition.
Charting the Divine Plan: Orra White Hitchcock in the World
One of the things we often say about the archival materials we are digitizing and adding to ACDC is that we never know what researchers will do with our materials once we release them into the world wide web. The Papers of Edward and Orra White Hitchcock and Orra White Hitchcock’s Classroom Drawings were among…Continue Reading Charting the Divine Plan: Orra White Hitchcock in the World